The Demon's Apprentice

by Ben Reeder

  He stood there for a moment, and then a red wave of his aura flowed toward me. I moved my hand instinctively, and caught the punch on my forearm.

  “Perfect. Again!”

  Another wave moved toward me, and I caught the other hand on my other arm. Suddenly, several red tendrils began to arc out at me, and I found myself trying to see which one was the real thing.

  “Hey!” I cried out, confused.

  “That’s what it looks like when someone is considering several attacks. Now, watch as I decide on one.” The red lines began to fade, leaving one or two still bright. Then only one was left, and I barely managed to get my arm in front of the punch in time.

  “Crap, that’s going to make things hard if he makes up his mind real fast.”

  “Actually, it can work to your advantage if you realize that he’s not concentrating on defense while he’s weighing his options to attack. If you relax, you’ll also learn, in time, how to take your opponent’s attack and make the energy he put into it flow back to him. But, that takes more time and practice than we have.”

  His eyebrows creased together and he shook his head. “I’m still not sure this is going to do it. A werewolf still has too many physical advantages over a normal person, or a mage without access to his magick. What we’ve done tonight will help, but I don’t know if it will be enough to handle an experienced Were like King.”

  I reached into my front pocket and pulled out the baggie with the hair and claw sliver in it. “I think I might have something that can help with that.”

  Lucas and Wanda made it back a little after eleven, with a reluctant-looking Collins in tow. He had on jeans, high tops, and a blue jacket over a dark blue t-shirt, and, tucked under one arm, he had a thick folder with New Essex Police Department markings on it.

  “I hit the jackpot on King,” he told us as he laid the folder down on the desk. “Spent a couple of hours this morning with a sketch artist, and I went through the mug shots. Our boy Dominic’s got himself a record you could choke a damn horse on. Arson, robbery, drugs, you name it.”

  “Murder?” I asked.

  “Two counts, acquitted both times,” Collins scowled. “Damnedest thing. Witnesses kept on dying.”

  “How convenient,” Dr C added dryly.

  “Yeah. I handed pictures of him out during the game, and he’s got a couple of warrants out on him, so we’re golden there. But, I still don’t like letting the kid go up against this guy. You’re supposed to be some kind of big shot, why aren’t you doing it?”

  “Because Chance made the challenge. Otherwise, I would be gearing up to step into that arena. There’s nothing I’d like better than to go in his place, believe me.”

  “What if he doesn’t walk outta there?” Collins demanded.

  “I’ll kill the bastard myself,” Dr. C said.

  “That makes me feel better,” I snapped.

  “Sorry, Chance. I just wish I could fight in your place tonight.”

  “Well, you can’t, so we work with the plan we have, okay?” Collins and Dr. C looked at each other for a moment before they nodded. Somehow, that wasn’t any more comforting than knowing Dr. C would kill King if I didn’t survive the night.

  “Unfortunately, we don’t have any other choices. But, as far as the plan we have goes, I have something for you, Collins. I hate the thought of being the only back up Chance has. This should help even the odds a little,” Dr C. said as he pulled out another bundle from his desk drawer and unwrapped handful of bullets tipped in silver. “Did you ever watch The Wolf Man?”

  As Dr. C told Collins about the silver rounds, I saw Shade poke her head in the door and crook her finger at me. She didn’t need to ask me twice. As soon as I was out the door, she stepped up to me and wrapped her arms around me. She’d changed into her pink sweats and “Bitch” t-shirt again.

  “I spent the whole game worrying about you.” Her voice was soft as she bent her forehead to touch mine.

  “I was a little worried about you, too,” I said into the narrow space between us. Lame, lame, LAME, I scolded myself. “I didn’t know if King was going to try something before we went out tonight.”

  “He’s not above it,”

  “I was with Dr. C. He would’ve mopped the floor with King if he tried anything.”

  “He’d be doing the world a favor if he killed him,” she growled. Her eyes flashed gold, and I could feel the depth of her hatred for him in her voice. I never wanted to be on the receiving end of that.

  “No, I want my shot at him first.” The anger I had been keeping under wraps all afternoon threatened to boil over. I clamped down on it, tucked it back into the dark little place I had buried it to let it ferment until I faced him tonight.

  “You and me both,” Shade answered with a ferocity to match mine. “Sinbad needs to talk to you about the challenge tonight. We may both get our shot at him.”

  “He killed Mr. Chomsky, Shade. There’s no way he’s walking away from the challenge alive. No way.”

  “Just talk to Sinbad, and listen to him. I need you, Chance…not just for this. Promise me you’ll do what he tells you to do?” She lifted her eyes to meet mine, and I knew I would promise her anything she wanted.

  “I promise. I’ll listen to him, and I’ll do what he tells me.” I felt the familiar warm rush wash over me, and upped my quota of promises allowed in one week by another notch.

  “Thanks.” She looked at me for a moment like she wanted to say something else, but Sinbad’s voice cut her off.

  “Okay, you two, enough with the kissy-face crap,” he growled. Shade straightened in my arms, and turned to face him. They stared at each other for a moment, and Sinbad leaned in toward her. She backed up a step, then looked down and turned her head to one side. He gestured for her to go, and she slid into the lab.

  “What did you want to talk to me about?” I asked him. If I wasn’t exactly respectful, he could bite me.

  “The Kin have all kinds of rules and traditions surrounding a challenge. You’re an outsider, so you’re gonna have to follow them even better than King does.”

  “Like he’s gonna play by the rules,” I sneered.

  “That’s why you gotta do it. King doesn’t know I’m gonna be there, but you can bet he was already planning on using the rules to his advantage. What you gotta do, kid, is turn that around on him. Whatever he asks you to do, you do it, and you smile about it, like you’re humoring him. Offer to do a little more, so that he looks weak no matter what happens.”

  “How literal are your rules?”

  He gave me a slow smile. “Very.”

  Chapter 18

  ~ Among honorable men, be twice the gentleman; among outlaws, be twice the bastard. ~

  Klaus Von Bismarck, 19th century wizard

  “No one said anything about a cop,” Sinbad snarled when Collins came out the front door with Dr. C and my friends. “We don’t bring in the cowan authorities, Corwin, you know that!”

  “He followed us last night,” I said. The alpha looked down at me. Shade stepped up beside me, and I felt the sleeve of her black jacket brush against my arm as she took my hand.

  “And you told him what was going on, didn’t you, wizard?”

  “We need an ally; Chance needs an ally,” Dr. C said, “and Collins is worth more to us knowing about the other side of the Veil than he is wallowing in continued ignorance.”

  “You can’t convince me of that, wizard,” the Were barked.

  “He’s the only person who can legally kill Dominic King,” he said flatly.

  That stopped Sinbad short. “I was wrong about you, Corwin,” he said after a few moments of silence. “You’re a harder man than I thought.”

  “I’m a wizard,” Dr. C’s tone dropped the temperature a few degrees, “I’m as hard as I need to be to keep Chance alive. Okay, kids. Let’s load up and move out.”

  I piled into the Falcon with Wanda and Lucas, while Dr. C opened the driver’s side door of a beat-up old green Land
Rover and climbed in. Sinbad straddled a heavy-looking vintage chopper and kick-started it, while Shade slipped her black helmet on and got on a sleek black and red sport bike. She led us out of the parking lot, followed by Dr. C and Sinbad, with the Falcon playing tail-end Charlie.

  We were quiet on the ride out. What do you talk about when you’re about to jump into an arena with an alpha werewolf? When we pulled up to the gate of the Boy Scout camp, King was waiting for us astride a big chopper, with the boys behind him on their sport bikes, pointing their headlights at us. Shade rode around to park her bike between our vehicles and the gate, and pulled her helmet off while the rest of us got out.

  “I knew you weren’t man enough to face me alone,” King called as we peered at him through the glaring lights. His glance went to Sinbad sitting silently astride his bike, and I could see a frown start to crease his forehead.

  “But nine-to-one in your favor makes you all studly and cool?” I shot back, gesturing at the collected pack behind him. “Or did you already forget what I did on my own last night?” I could see that strike a nerve even against the lights.

  Without bothering to respond, he started up his bike and gunned it. He twisted the bike around, spraying us with gravel in a show of contempt before he took off down the road. The rest of the pack followed, leaving us with only the light of our own headlights on the heavy wooden gate and the sounds of their retreating bikes. We all scrambled back into our vehicles as Shade pushed the gate open and rode in first, waiting for us to follow her back down the winding road.

  “It doesn’t seem as long when you’re not being chased by werewolves,” Lucas joked nervously as we drove into the lot in front of the shattered lodge. Off to one side of the lodge, floodlights illuminated a sunken area bordered in concrete, and King and the rest of the pack waited on the raised lip. A wooden sign labeled it “The Pit.” Boy, were they creative or what?

  We got out, and the feeling of dread that I had been fending off all night started to creep into my stomach. I felt like I had swallowed a lump of lead as I got out of the car. A grim-looking Dr. C and Sinbad joined us, and Dr. C pressed two holstered guns into my hands. One was the paintball gun, huge and heavy in its rig. The other was the one that scared me. It was a real gun, the same one he’d shot one of the wolves with the night before.

  “What…” I stammered.

  “Just one more thing he’ll have to demand you take off,” he explained as he helped me belt the two weapons on my hips. “But, just in case, there’s a full magazine in it, and a round in the chamber. The safety is off, so if it comes down to it, all you have to do is put the red dot on your target and pull the trigger.”

  “Isn’t this kind of dangerous?” I adjusted the holsters along my legs. “Giving a fifteen-year-old kid a loaded gun?”

  “Not quite as dangerous as letting you walk into a duel with a full-grown werewolf.”

  “Nothing like a little perspective to cheer a guy up,” I muttered, pulling a few of the green paintballs from one of the spare hoppers and slipping them into my pocket. “Where’s Collins?” Collins was a key part of the plan, and I was didn’t like not knowing when he was going to show.

  “He’ll be responding to an anonymous tip soon,” Dr. C answered.

  I finished with the holster, then straightened. Guns settled, I turned to face King, and everyone fell in behind me. I felt like a gunfighter in the Old West, with two guns strapped to my ass, facing the outlaw at high noon, only it was high midnight. Dr. C was behind my left shoulder, Sinbad on the right, with Lucas and Wanda behind them, and Shade on my right side, her slender hand in mine. I walked forward with my heart pounding like a trip hammer in my chest, my stomach clenched into one huge knot, and my palms sweating. King stepped in front of me as I got to the edge of what turned out to be an old, battered amphitheatre.

  “Did you change your mind?” I asked, as he put out a hand to stop me.

  “This is between you and me. They got no business here,” he said as he gestured at everyone behind me.

  “This was never just between you and me,” I growled. “So shut the fuck up and quit stalling.” That made the rest of the pack look at King with feral eyes. They sensed weakness, even if it was only implied. He had to answer it, and there was almost no good way for him to do that. If he let me into the amphitheatre, I was the one who had forced it. If he stuck to his guns, he risked showing fear, whether there was any or not.

  I pushed past him and took a few steps into the Pit, then turned back and looked up at him. “Come down here and face me.” I jumped the last few steps and landed on the broad expanse at the bottom. King glared at me and leaped the entire distance, landing with a heavy thump in front of me. As entrances went, it beat mine hands down.

  “I’m the one who got wronged, here. I set the terms. No gun. No wands or any other focuses. No help from the peanut gallery.” He strutted back and forth as he ticked off each demand on his fingertips.

  I remembered Sinbad’s advice and nodded like I’d expected this all along. “Do you need me to do anything else to handicap myself for you?” I taunted. “Maybe tie one hand behind my back, or wear a blindfold?”

  “Shut up, boy! Do what I say, or die right now!” I could smell the foul stench of his breath as the sound of his voice buffeted me.

  “So, you’re afraid of me with the guns and the wand. Fine: no guns, no wand. Dr. C, no help from you, okay? So, are you feeling tough enough to face me now?” I unbuckled the holsters and tossed them on one of the amphitheater seats, then laid the TK wand down on top of them.

  “None of that Infernum crap from you, either,” King smiled. His eyes went to Sinbad at the top of the Pit. I sensed a trap, and weighed my next words carefully, trying to avoid falling into it. If Sinbad hadn’t warned me, I would have fallen into it like an idiot.

  “Oh, so we can’t use spells? I can still tie one hand behind my back, if you’re that worried.” From above me, I could hear the chuckles of the pack as they sensed the balance of the fight already starting to shift. “Do you need someone else to come fight for you, too?”

  “Fine, keep your damn spells, brat. It’ll make it last longer.” He took a step back, so I did, too. We both shucked our jackets off and stood facing each other in jeans and black t-shirts. He had a good six inches of height on me, and well over fifty pounds of weight. Even if not much of it was muscle, he was still a werewolf. He could pulp my bones with one hand if he wanted to, and I was pretty sure he did.

  “Whenever you’re ready, punk,” he said from across the makeshift arena.

  This was it. I centered myself, and let my aura sight overlay my vision, so I could see where he was going to move. I’d faced a major demon and kicked its ass only a week ago, and here I was, worrying about a fight with a werewolf. I told the little voice in my head that was trying to remind me that I’d spent three years preparing to fight Dulka to shut up, and dropped into a decent imitation of a fighting stance I’d picked up from one of Dr. C’s memories, then looked up at King.

  “Let’s do this.”

  He took me at my word and jumped, crossing the distance between us in one flailing leap. Time seemed to crawl as I watched him fly at me, and my aura sight showed me where he intended to swipe at me. I stepped forward to catch him at the hips, and planted my right shoulder into his side. The impact made me stumble, but it threw him to the ground in a tumbling heap. I turned to face him as he rolled to his feet and brushed a hand across his jaw. He bounced on the balls of his feet and floated at me with his fists up. A line of red flowed out toward me from his right hand, and I ducked to my left, outside of his punch, and shot my left hand into an uppercut into his ribs. I hit him again before he threw a backhand that connected. Knowing where he was going to hit only worked if I could move out of the way. Even pumped up like I was, he was still faster than me, and a lot stronger. The back of his right hand slammed into my jaw, and I saw stars. The shot spun me around and sent me sprawling to the concrete floor. I hit a
nd rolled to one side, and barely missed being crushed under King’s boots as he landed where I had been a heartbeat before. I rolled again, but not fast enough. His boot caught me in the gut and flung me into the air. I managed to right myself in midair, thankful for the enhanced reflexes of my augmentation spell, and stumbled as I hit the ground, on my feet now, no matter how clumsy I’d been about doing it.

  When I got my feet under me, though, King was almost on me in a lineman’s rush. I couldn’t get out of the way in time, so I dropped beneath him, kicked my feet up into his crotch and sent him sailing over my head. I did a kick-up, enjoying the surge of strength and turned to face him. I hurt, but I still felt strong. King struggled to his feet and looked across at me, and I saw the blur of multiple attacks being considered, each red line fading as he dismissed it in favor of another, then another, until only a few lines radiated out from him. We were both balls-to-the-wall brawlers; we relied on the power of an attack to make up for any lack of skill. Against any other kind of fighter, we would have been more effective. Against each other…it was gonna be a hell of a fight.

  Suddenly, King’s aura shifted to a single, broad red line, an attack of sheer strength and speed I couldn’t hope to block and that was supposed to be so fast I couldn’t dodge it. He rushed at me with his right fist drawn back to his ear, and I stepped forward and to my right. My left arm rocketed out and caught him in a clothesline, sending him flying with his feet in the air. He landed on his shoulders, hitting so hard that the toes of his boots rebounded off the concrete next to his head. I took a page out of his book of fighting tactics and rushed him while he was down, trying to ignore the wash of hot pain that shot up my left arm and across my back.

  It was a mistake. His foot came out of nowhere and knocked me spinning. As I tried to clear my head, I felt a mule kick me in the ribs, and I went flying again. No fancy landing this time. I hit the ground like a side of beef, with the wind knocked out of me. As my diaphragm tried to re-learn how to do its job, King picked me up by the throat and held me suspended in front of him.